Our Love Is A Tragedy I Wouldn't Miss When In Rome
by ChristineBH
Summary: Keith know that they both have to do their duties as men in the Roman Empire and help create the next generation. Whether they like during it or not and whether they like the other one during it or not. He has to honor his family name while honoring his heart.
1. Birth of a Marriage

It was comical how divided people were in knowing the eventual relationship between Keith and Lance. Some people said it was so far out of their minds that it wasn't even on the list of possibilities while others said they had seen it coming since Lance glared at Keith for scoring higher in one of the Olympian games that no one really remembered the details about anymore. It had been when both men had still been simple teenage boys and most young, unmarried men had been a part of the event.

Important thing was that they had a special relationship now. Or it was special to them. They couldn't marry each other but men warming each other's beds weren't nearly as rare as in other places. The only uncommon thing about their arrangement were that there wasn't a designated lover and a designated loved as eros was usually seen as in all the stories or pederasty was often seen in society.

It was only that uncommon trait that some people had a slight problem with. However, no one said anything as long as both boys served their country as all men and women should. Some men fought for their country in great wars with an obvious hope of being immortalized, some kept the economy going with other goods and services and everyone, men and women, had to participate in creating the next generation for Rome regardless of other interests.

That was why Keith found himself next to his new wife while being congratulated but only having eyes for Lance who sent him a melancholy smile from his spot next to _his_ wife.

Keith hated Lance's wife, Olympias, for the sole reason of her being Lance's wife and knowing that they did the same things he and Lance did in order for her to be pregnant. She was also Keith's second cousin and Keith had never truly hated a family member before she married Lance.

Keith looked at his own wife. A lovely girl he had been engaged to since his teens and only met her face to face once a year prior to their wedding despite being a 21-year-old adult now. She was pretty but all wrong. Her hair and eyes a too dark color and her face was too pale for Keith despite her being a nuance or two darker than Keith's fair face when she wasn't wearing make-up. Everyone else wanted a wife as pale as could be but Keith only wanted the man leaning up against the wall with his tan skin that emphasized his blue eyes and hair a noticeably darker brown than his skin but nowhere as dark as Keith's black hair.

Keith and Lance were opposites in appearance but Keith thought they were perfect together and he would compare it to a god's beauty if he wasn't so afraid of being punished for his hybris. Maybe the gods would even take time out of their schedule to awaken some nemesis as they often did in tragedies.

Keith waited until everyone had left before he stopped pretending that he didn't know what was expected of him now. He knew people couldn't know if he fulfilled his role or not after only one night but he knew that if he allowed himself to stall, then he would never try.

Keith and his wife shared an apple in the name of Aphrodite as a sign of love but mostly just to please Keith's father who Keith didn't want to disappoint and who his wife wanted to give a good impression to. Keith led his wife through the first floor and to her bedroom on the second floor as soon as they had finished the apple.

Keith's wife removed her clothing and her body looked almost exactly like the statue of Aphrodite's body that Keith had prayed to only days prior. It was strong and healthy but with fat softening her entire body and making especially her hips and stomach only a little wider than the statue's had been. Keith's wife was close to Greek perfection but all Keith could think about was how Lance was the last one to leave Keith's house and how he lingered for a moment as they locked eyes. Lance's hand had been on his wife's back and giving her a light tough when it was time to walk out the doorway after having been standing in front of it for a long minute.

Keith had never slept with anyone other than Lance at that point. He had simply never had the urge to but he moved between her legs and took a couple deep breaths. Keith looked down at the girl under him and saw his own unease reflected in her eyes.

Keith bit his lip, closed his eyes and thought of Lance being in him a few days prior. The heavy breathing from both of them and the hard and possessive press of Lance's lips on Keith's lips. Keith's body was just beginning to react when the girl under him sucked in a breath and pulled Keith out of his fantasy.

Keith was almost sure she was as little into this as he was but he didn't know her enough to know or even ask without fear of her complaining about him to someone of authority or even just her family and then everyone would accuse Keith of not contributing to his country and Keith would ruin his family name. His father would never forgive him for that.

Keith knew a lot of guys who wished they could sleep with their wives without risk making them pregnant every time but the thought of having any relations with his wife at all made Keith nauseous and he wished he could impregnate her without having to touch her like that.

Keith let out a shaky breath and touched himself. He still had to dream himself far away from his wife's naked body but the stimulation worked and soon he was erect and moved up until he was face to face with his wife. She looked up at him with wide, brown eyes and he wished that he could just stop this right now. Just seeing her was enough to soften him and he closed his eyes as he tried to find the right place in her before all his hard work was for naught.

There were sounds but they sounded like a cheap version of how Keith knew this could sound like. She grunted and he exhaled every time he pushed forward. None of them touched each other more than strictly necessary. Both his forearms were next to her face and his hands curled up around the bedsheet. Her hands were down her sides in straight lines and her hands started out limp but they quickly also got a firm grip of the bedsheet and tensed more and more the longer she laid with Keith on top of her.

It took so long. Keith wished to have it over with before it even started but it stretched out longer than when it was Keith and Lance even though Keith always tried to stretch _those_ times out for as long as both he and Lance could go.

Luckily just like all good things, the bad things eventually end too and Keith and his wife sighed in relief when Keith rolled off her, gave her an awkward look in the attempt to send her a nice one, and he walked out the door and down the stairs to his own room to sleep the experience off.

* * *

"Lance," Keith huffed.

"Yeah?" Lance asked breathlessly.

"Lance," Keith repeated, not really trying to say anything but just wanting to repeat Lance's name.

Lance let his hand run through Keith's bangs and studied Keith's face. "You're so beautiful like this."

"Yeah?" Keith asked. His eyes tried to lock into Lance's but Lance was too busy taking all of Keith in.

"Yeah," Lance confirmed and looked right into Keith's eyes. It was so intense and full of adoration that it frightened Keith but at the same time, it was so comforting that Keith never wanted to leave his spot under Lance.

"Ready for more?" Lance asked with a smirk and an eyebrow wiggle.

Keith would normally remove that smirk before it had even time to mark Lance's face and Lance knew it but Lance also knew that Keith wouldn't be able to not smirk right back in that moment and put his hands on Lance's cheeks as he whispered right in front of Lance's lips, "Yeah."

Keith then held his arms around Lance as he held of tight for every thrust and let himself lose control with no shame of who would hear him.

* * *

Keith finally learned his wife's name after their first week of marriage. It had somehow not come up before that and Keith found that fact disturbingly fitting for their situation. He had informed her of him leaving the house and hesitated in the search for her name when she had told him it was Aspasia. Keith had simply nodded, told her his name, and then left. They had already had intercourse twice by then but exchanging names had still felt uncomfortably intimate

* * *

Olympias gave birth just as Aspasia started showing. Keith stopped trying to sleep with his wife now that she couldn't accuse him of not fulfilling his duties as her husband and the doctor said it was unhealthy for a woman to have intercourse so soon after giving birth so Lance and Keith had all the time they used to have to just find comfort in each other.

At least Keith assumed that was the reason for Lance's roughness every day Lance saw both Keith and Aspasia, but Keith didn't complain. He needed it every time he remembered the baby in Olympias's arms. A beautiful girl with blue eyes and skin a soft mixture of Lance's tan and Olympias's fair skin. The baby didn't have any hair and her eyes could still darken but Keith could almost see her running around with siblings that looked just like her as if they were sheep running after Lance as their shepherd.

Keith and Lance sat in Keith's bed for once not rushing into sex as soon as they finally saw each other again. Lance looked up at the ceiling.

"I can't believe that you're going to be a father," Lance commented.

"I can't believe that you _are_ a father," Keith fired back but he still couldn't look up at Lance.

"Yeah," Lance sighed.

Keith took Lance's hand, kissed the most pronounced knuckle and turned his eyes away from their hands as he looked up at Lance. "How are we going to do this?"

Lance refused to look up from his lap. He shrugged with fake nonchalance and mumbled, "We're just going to take it as it comes I guess."

"I love you," Keith whispered and sniffed. It would never be enough and Keith would always have to look at Lance walking around with his future children. The only way for them to ever become family was marrying one of their children to each other but Keith didn't want that, he wanted to be the one to marry Lance.

"I love you too," Lance told his own lap as he stared it down.

* * *

Aspasia gave birth to a boy. The baby was healthy and had black hair and dark brown eyes. One would think it was the perfect combination between Keith and Aspasia if it wasn't for the dark skin of the child. Keith was livid when he saw it. Not because his wife had slept with another man but because he now had to react to this in the public eye and she hadn't even had the decency to warn him. He wanted to just ignore it but his family name would be ruined as soon as anyone else saw the child and his name would stay ruined if he didn't demand a punishment, but Keith also knew the Solon's Law and that his wife would have to dress in a way that told everyone what she had done. Keith assumed the law was like that in order to punish the woman but Keith's father was already breathing down his neck for him visiting Lance even more now that Olympias had time to heal and the whole city seeing that his wife found warmth in another man's bed wouldn't help his case.

"Who did you sleep with, Aspasia?" Keith asked her as she still laid in bed exhausted from giving birth. Keith was happy that she didn't die in childbirth but he didn't have enough sympathy for her situation to let her recover. Not that Keith was great at postponing any of his emotions under any circumstances.

"You," she answered but Keith could see the fear in her eyes.

"Who other than me?" Keith muttered full of poison.

"No one!" She insisted so loudly that she had to hush her little baby boy while still having her eyes locked on her husband.

"Who else, Aspasia?" Keith asked her with even more poison. He would have shouted but he didn't really hate the baby, only its cry and its existence. "I know that isn't my child."

She looked down at the baby. Keith assumed it was so see if there was any way of her convincing him that the baby was really his but she just sighed deeply and looked up at him again as she answered, "Just a traveler who's never going to visit this place ever again."

Keith knew it was probably a lie but he didn't need anything else than her confession of sleeping with another man and her lying about the father would make it easier for Keith as he wouldn't have to deal with dishonoring another family. He could already see it, the other family would insist that there was no case since Keith hadn't caught them in the act but Keith would be expected to try until he won the case. It would never end or it would end badly with some sort of revenge after a hefty punishment.

He really just wanted this over with and he wanted to forget that he ever had a wife and that his wife ever had a baby. Keith just wanted Lance and for Lance to have no one else.

"Are you going to pull me to court?" Aspasia asked him.

Keith wanted to tell her no. She looked so saddened, scared and so very young. She was in her late teens. Really not much younger than Keith who already felt so old after all the shit life had thrown his way.

Aspasia looked like Lance's youngest sister the day she met her fiancé. All scared and too young to have a future husband but resigning in the knowledge that she couldn't do anything about it.

Keith looked down at the sleeping baby with dark eyes and skin even darker than Lance's. He bit his bottom lip and looked up at her with furrowed eyes and eyes just wet enough for him to notice but hopefully so little that she didn't.

"I have to," he told her full of regret.

Aspasia nodded as her eyes turned noticeable glassy and she had to dry her cheeks with the hand not holding her baby before the tears landed on him.

Keith gave her another look and decided that they had had their talk now and she could have time to recover and interact with her baby. They both needed time to recover and take it all in.

"Please don't do this to me," Aspasia's voice stopped Keith right before he had existed the room.

Keith turned around and looked at her. She still awoke pity in him but he narrowed her eyes as he looked at her. " _I'm_ doing this to you?"

Aspasia widened her eyes and opened her mouth just enough for Keith to see a sliver of her front teeth.

"You got pregnant with someone else's child," Keith scolded her.

"I can only sit at home all day and I'm bored," she complained.

"I'm sorry you're rich then," Keith said sarcastically. "If you wanted something to do, then I could get rid of some of the help."

Aspasia looked to the side with furrowed eyebrows. There were still tears in her eyes but she huffed out her cheeks and turned her now much firmer eyes back on Keith. "No, I don't want you to get rid of the slaves but it's not like you were there to do anything with. You avoid me if you can."

"I've tried and it's not like you're into it either," Keith defended himself. He spoke the truth but so did she.

"It's a little difficult to enjoy it when I know you wish I had a dick," Aspasia scowled and Keith was angry with her but he was mostly amazed that for once, he actually felt something when he looked at her and not just indifference.

Aspasia scowled and muttered, "I knew it wouldn't end well to marry someone with the face of a woman."

"At least we can hope that if you ever have a daughter it will be sometime when you have closed your legs for people who's not your husband," Keith said just to hurt her while she was lying down. Keith was petty and a hypocrite but he needed to hurt her now that he had to deal with this fiasco.

"Get out, get out, get out!" Aspasia yelled after him and threw one of her pillows after him. The baby cried loudly and Keith hoped she would learn to not yell near or jostle the baby in the future.

* * *

"I hate this and I hate you," Aspasia complained out of the blue as he ate dinner.

"What?" Keith asked too stunned to react to her sudden exclamation. It had been an entirely silent dinner excluding the sound of plates and his skyphos not to mention that like all men and women, Keith and his wife ate in separate rooms.

"Everyone thinks I'm a whore now all because you went and got me judged. I can't even practice any public religious ceremonies anymore!" Her eyes were burning like embers and Keith was a little anxious about the possibility of her hitting him but not anxious enough to stop himself from being snarky.

"You did this to yourself," Keith said and looked down at his plate of food once more in order to cut the food out.

"Like you're any better," she sneered. "I know what you use all that olive oil on."

"I didn't go out and get pregnant," Keith mumbled but made sure to talk clearly enough for her to understand every word.

"No, I know, but if you could you would have been by now."

Keith really did miss the days when she would shut her mouth. It was less than two weeks prior but Keith remembered it with a thick layer of nostalgia.

"I don't care what you do if you can do it secretly," Keith said honestly. What he did care about though was her stopping him from eating his food in peace.

"You're lying!" Aspasia insisted.

Keith looked up at her without even trying to hide any of his irritation about being interrupted in eating or how little he cared about what she was saying. "Do I look like I care about what you do?"

Aspasia was silent but furrowed her eyebrows and leaned back in her chair.

"Because if I did," Keith leaned forward in his seat "then it's my mistake and I'm _so_ sorry for making you believe I use even a second of my day thinking about you."

Keith didn't even dismiss her, he just continued to eat and pretend like he didn't notice when she eventually left.


	2. The Tiniest Lifeboat to Hades

Lance's wife started showing the year after their first child had been born. Their first was still small enough to be held and now had green eyes that explored the world and excitedly patted her mother's stomach as she babbled about her little brother or sister.

Keith had to leave the room in fear of anyone seeing him shed any tears.

Keith tried to avoid Lance that day but Lance was persistent and ended up laying in Keith's bedroom with Keith in his arms. Lance on his back and Keith on his side with his face smashed into Lance's neck.

"Please don't cry, Keith," Lance mumbled into Keith's hair when it sounded like Keith was about to start crying only minutes after calming down.

"I won't," Keith insisted with a broken voice into Lance's neck.

The arms around Keith tensed and the hand behind his head pushed him tighter into the base of Lance's neck.

"I didn't do it to make you sad," Lance informed Keith. It was redundant, as Keith already knew this, but somehow it was something that he didn't know that he needed to hear.

Keith's voice was muffled but Lance still understood it when Keith answered, "It did."

"I know, Sweetheart," Lance said and sniffed.

Keith tried to pull back but Lance tightened his grip.

"I hate that I have to do this to you," Lance muttered bitterly in a fragile attempt to hide his misery of making Keith cry.

"Me too," Keith answered weak but honest.

"At least it will only be you sleeping with someone else for a while," Lance said in an attempt to comfort Keith but it only weighed his heart down even more.

"Yeah…" Keith stretched the word out.

"Hey," Lance said as he pulled Keith away from his neck. Lance moved his hands to the sides of Keith's head to hold Keith's gaze better and letting his thumbs brush over the skin under Keith's eyes. "It's not that bad. It takes a lot less preparation at least."

"Yeah…" Keith answered the same way as before. He could lie far better than this but he was too emotionally drained to do so. Even if Lance was right in a way, he was still far more wrong because Aspasia didn't need to be stretched out and she created lubrication herself but Lance either underestimated or had no idea about how much time it took Keith to hype himself up to sleeping with his wife. Sleeping with Lance took preparation but nothing mental and it was fun to prepare with Lance. They didn't even need to prepare every time that they wanted to get off as they did a lot of stuff that didn't take any preparation at all but was often just as pleasurable as penetration was.

"I probably have to sleep with her before she sleeps with someone else again," Keith informed Lance.

"Yeah…" Lance breathed out, all light going out of her eyes. His eyes focusing on the ceiling behind Keith for a moment before they searched Keith's eyes out again. "Did you really think the baby was yours? Before it was born?"

"Yes," Keith answered more matter-of-factly than he could remember ever answering anything.

"That sucks," Lance commented in an effort to say something but it summed the whole situation up quite nicely.

"It's okay," Keith filled the silence out with a few awkward seconds after Lance's comment. It was an obvious lie because it wasn't okay. She couldn't just become pregnant with another man's child when Keith had worked so hard to give Rome what he was obligated to. What _they_ , him and his wife, was obligated to.

It wasn't a normal reason to be mad, Keith knew that. Some people loved their wives and some didn't but the ones who didn't get their feelings hurt because of love, got them hurt because of possessiveness. Nevertheless, Keith didn't care who his wife slept with if it didn't mean Keith had to work extra because of it. He would probably have been happy if she had found someone who looked like him enough to fool the public into believing it was his child.

"Did you confront her before you went public with it?" Lance questioned him.

"Yeah," Keith said and let Lance carry the whole weight of his head. "She said I looked like a woman."

Lance snorted at that and erupted in a small laughter that ended with forced coughing. "Sorry, sorry, I just didn't expect you to say something like that."

"Why do I put up with you," Keith mumbled to himself but also for Lance's benefit.

"Because you're _my_ woman," Lance said and bit his lips before he laughed over his own wit.

"Funny," Keith started with a deadpanned voice.

Lance leaned his head up and lowered Keith's head enough to peck Keith's lips. "Yes, I am."

* * *

Lance got another girl who looked like a wrinkly, red prune but would no doubt be just as beautiful as her sister.

Keith cried that day too. Secretly and never for anyone besides himself to know.

Only 2 months passed before Lance told Keith in the protective blanket of the night that Olympias was pregnant again.

Keith left Lance's house sudden that night and even though no one saw, he knew that he wasn't the only one to know of his shed tears that night.

* * *

"I never thanked you for letting Leon stay with us," Aspasia told him.

Leon was what Aspasia's son was named after Keith told her that naming a kid Simonides, meaning flat-nosed-son, was not a smart move on the naming apartment and Keith would rather not have a kid living in his house being bullied for its name.

"You're welcome, I guess," Keith mumbled unsure about what this was about and studied her nervous expression for answers he couldn't find.

"People would have understood after the-" she looked down at her clothes still showing the world how Leon was created, "circumstances"

"You're welcome," he repeated in a less patient voice.

"I know he couldn't go to his father after his left in his fisher boat but-" Oh, Leon's father was a fisherman now? Last time he had been a feisty father looking for his runaway son and before that he had been a soldier on his way to a war somewhere Aspasia conveniently didn't remember the name of.

Aspasia continued, "I'm sure my parents would have taken him in." Or Keith could have done like so many did with unwanted or weak babies and just left it outside to die.

"I just thought there was a better chance of success if he wasn't raised like you, only by you," Keith muttered

"But you didn't because you're secretly a decent person," she continued even though Keith wished he could just tune her out and Keith wasn't sure she hadn't hear what he had muttered to himself.

"Okay, just stop it," Keith ordered and exhaled deeply. "What do you want?"

"You see," she said and hesitated as if Keith wasn't already ready to just tell her to leave him a note since he didn't have forever to wait for her to find her words. "You said that you wished I had told you about Leon before I had him."

Oh, he knew where this was going.

"And I think that I'm pregnant again," she said and put a hand to her flat stomach.

"And it's not mine," Keith clarified.

Aspasia looked to the side of the room and a light blush colored her cheeks. "Probably," She looked over at Keith again and lifted her shoulders just enough to be noticeable and tilted her head to her left.

Keith exhaled deeply. "Don't you have any friends to visit if you're so bored while I work?" Keith asked because she was always in the house when he was and he was always there too unless he was at work or at Lance's.

Aspasia didn't answer instead the blush just grew and Keith looked up as he took another breath to collect himself enough to look at her again and ask, "Would it at least look like it could be ours if it's not?"

Aspasia bit her lip and looked away from Keith again. It just kept getting worse, didn't it?

"Maybe," she said so quickly that Keith almost didn't catch it.

Keith widened his eyes, furrowed his eyebrows and threw his hands to the side. "How many people have you slept with lately?"

Her eyes searched down closer to the floor. "That's not important."

Keith decided that he really needed to either get his wife to stop sleeping with half the city, accept that he would never have any children or tell Lance that he may have an STD. Probably at least two of those options.

"Are you not going to say anything?" Aspasia asked desperately.

Keith just sighed. "I don't know what to say. I don't even know what to think right now."

Keith covered his face in his hands and inhaled deeply through the space between his hands and face.

"Anything," Aspasia begged. "Are you going to have me judged again?"

Keith removed his hands. "That baby have better look like me."

"Or what?" Aspasia asked without her usual sass. "Are you going to force me to give the baby to the father or my parents if it's not yours?"

"Maybe," Keith answered but he knew he wouldn't. The baby wouldn't even have to look like him to keep it.

* * *

Lance got a beautiful little boy and Keith never thought he would praise the day Lance got a baby with someone else but he was ecstatic.

Lance had two girl _and_ a boy now and that had to be enough. It had to. Now Keith could sleep knowing that Lance wouldn't be sleeping with his wife.

* * *

"She's pregnant _again_?" Keith screeched and maybe Aspasia had been right that he was a woman because no man should be able to sound like he did at that moment. "You've already done your duty. You don't need to have any more children!"

"Yeah, so?" Lance sneered. Lance stood there with his hair a mess from running his hands through it and his toga put on crookedly.

"I don't see why you would want to sleep with her when you don't have to anymore," Keith told Lance truthfully. He thought they both had an agreement to exclusively sleep with each other when they didn't have to visit their wives' bedrooms anymore.

"Oh, don't tell me you don't enjoy it either," Lance said and rolled his eyes.

" _No_!" Keith cried. "I can't wait until this nightmare is over."

Lance furrowed his eyebrows and widened his eyes as he looked at Keith with either concern, disturbance, or both.

"Nightmare?" Lance repeated. "Is it really that bad?"

"Yes?" Keith furrowed his eyebrows as he looked up at Lance's face. "Isn't that how you feel about this whole thing?"

Lance looked stunned and he was biting the inside of his cheek, as he looked Keith up and down. "I don't like you sleeping with anyone else."

Keith looked down to the side of himself. "Me neither." He didn't know if he was saying that he didn't like the thought of Lance sleeping with anyone else or the thought of himself sleeping with anyone else. Probably both.

"Keith," Lance called but Keith didn't look up at him.

"Keith, hey, look at me," Lance asked and gently guided Keith's face towards him with a hand on his cheek. "Do you really hate to have sex?"

Keith looked into Lance's eyes and he knew that he couldn't have lied even if his walls had been up. "Not with you."

Lance exhaled. It sounded like a breathy laugh but Keith didn't see any humor in Lance's face.

Keith was silent for a moment before he remembered the reason for their argument. He took a step back so Lance's hand fell from his cheek. "I just don't see why you can't just find me if you're that horny."

"Keith," Lance breathed out.

"No, I don't want to hear how you like it. If sleeping with her is so much better than with me just do that instead of pulling me along."

"Keith, I was just-I was just angry," Lance said but Keith just huffed at the excuse. "You can't imagine how it feels like to know that you're at home with your wife and you're _during your duty_ as you keep reminding me that you have to!"

Keith's eyebrows were relaxed and his eyes were only in a half-glare but there was nothing half about the resentment radiating from him. "I can imagine that, Lance."

Lance swallowed. "Yes, of course." Lance looked away from Keith for just a moment as he bit his lips. "Is there anything I can do to make it better?"

"No." Keith shook his head. He would have to look at this child too just like he did to the rest and know it came from Lance and Olympias doing _things_. Things that Lance had a right to do with his own wife but that Keith didn't think he should with anyone other than Keith.

Lance took a step closer to Keith so they were as close as they could be and tried to wrap his arms around Keith but Keith took another back.

"No, stay away from me," Keith demanded.

"Keith, don't-" Lance tried but then changed his mind and deflated as he continued, "Okay, I will leave you alone."

"Good," Keith said tonelessly.

"Can we talk again soon?" Lance asked with fragile hope in his eyes.

Keith looked away from Lance and crossed his arms. "I don't know."

"I haven't lost you forever, have I?" Lance asked desperately but Keith was unsure if he didn't already know the answer or not and just tried to fool himself.

Keith looked back at Lance and ignored the tension in his whole body as he answered, "I don't know, Lance."

Lance's whole body slacked except his legs though they looked only a moment away from giving up too. His eyes were widened and saw something far away that Keith would never know.

* * *

Lance walked up to Keith's house days later with an apple. Keith was still not over his negative emotions but the sight of the red fruit defrosted his heart more than he would ever let Lance know.

"Keith, I really missed you, did you miss me?" Lance asked but Keith just stared at him. "Okay, fair. Can I at least apologize to you?"

Keith glared at the wall but nodded.

"I'm really, really sorry for sleeping with my wife. I'll never do it again."

"And I will only do it to make mine pregnant as much as I absolutely have to," Keith mumbled.

"Does this mean that you forgive me?" Lance asked with such joy that Keith turned his head to see Lance's sun-kissed face light up and his eyes twinkling like the most precious jewels.

"Ye- Uf!" Keith huffed as he got an armful of Lance squeezing him half to death.

"Thank you," Lance breathed out and kissed Keith hair and then went down to his face. He landed a few kisses on his lips but it wasn't planned as Lance kissed every surface he could on Keith's face. '

* * *

Keith was sleeping alone but peacefully that night dreaming about walking around with Lance and never having to worry about either of them sleeping with their wives ever again when he was awoken by a shrill scream of a child.

"Papa, papa!" Leon cried. His little mouth was running through the words fast and Keith could hear that there were more words than he understood from such a small child especially when he was still pulled half under by sleep.

Leon's chubby legs had never run that fast because Keith barely sat up before his arm was pulled with the full strength of a toddler towards the stairs.

Keith carried the child up, gave him to one of the slaves who had awoken by the noise and went into his wife's bedroom.

There were a large bloodstain and all the blood left Keith's face.

"Aspasia?" he called. "Aspasia, where are you?"

He gingerly stepped into the room.

" _Aspasia?"_ He asked sharper as his eyes searched for her in the dim room.

Keith looked down when he heard heavy breaths and discovered both his crying wife and the fact that he had almost stepped on her as she sat crying on the floor.

"Have you come to yell at me?" she sobbed and Keith's heart broke. He didn't love her, he didn't even particularly like her, but close to everyone who sounded like that would have awoken something tender and protective in Keith.

"No, why would I do that?" Keith asked as he too sat down on the floor to be on the same level as she was. He wanted to hold her hand or pet her hair but he didn't know if it would be appreciated or not so he just tried his best to look friendly.

"Because it's my fault?" she asked and lifted her head to look at Keith. Her face was blotchy and sticky but Keith had never wanted to hug her before that moment.

"What is?" Keith asked as he tried to find clues in her face.

"The baby," she sobbed. Keith thought she meant Leon at first but then he followed her gaze to the bed and stood up to look down at it.

Right there in the middle of the blood was a creature. It looked vaguely like a human but it was smaller than his hand, had protruding black eyes, and looked like it had no fat under its red, translucent skin. It was the ugliest thing Keith had ever seen but it made him want to cry to see it like this. Still, small and dead.

His eyes turned down to Aspasia again and he bit his lip as she looked pleadingly at him but he had nothing to give her. She wanted him to tell her that it would be alright but it wouldn't. Something had went wrong and she would need to be looked at in the morning.

However, he wasn't going to curse her either when the gods had already done so. She had paid in the public eye for her first immorality and this one had an even stepper pay for her second one.

Keith didn't know what to do in this situation but he had to make a choice and hope for the best.

"I'm taking Leon downstairs-" Keith started but was interrupted by Aspasia.

"No! Not him too. Don't take him from me," she begged.

"I'm not, just for tonight, okay?" Keith asked. A husband had more say than a wife but he wanted her to be okay with this.

"Okay," she agreed and Keith saw her nod in the darkness.

"One of the slaves, Pherenike I think, is here. She'll collect some water for you and we'll deal with this in the morning, okay?"

Aspasia didn't vocalize an answer but she nodded once more and that was good enough.

* * *

It was a small funeral for a small person.

Both Keith and Aspasia wanted to keep it as discreet as possible for their already damaged status as unfaithful wife and unfulfilling husband who couldn't control his wife.

Not even Keith's parents knew. Only Keith, Aspasia, Pherenike who had taken care of the bedsheets and made a makeshift bed for Aspasia in the middle of the night, the physician Keith had brought his wife to that morning, and possibly soon Aspasia's parents that she saw at times when Keith wasn't home.

Aspasia held a cloth with the baby. She was pale from both her night, holding the corpse of what would have been her second child and maybe Keith's first and the bloodletting from a cut close to her vagina which the physician had explained was the affected area. It stood for infancy but since her body had had too much it rejected her infant. The bleeding therefore should help with the excess blood in Aspasia's body.

Important thing was that she could stand and hold the blanket while Keith dug a hole a far distance from the city and road.

Aspasia kissed the blanket before putting it down into the hole.

Keith didn't know if she didn't remove the blanket to kiss the baby itself because she couldn't bear to see the child but he wouldn't blame her for not wanting to see the child. It hadn't been pretty when Keith had removed it from her bed before leaving early that morning. It had been all shriveled up and burned an ugly image into Keith's brain, so Keith didn't blame her one bit.

Keith didn't show it but he secretly said goodbye to the child too before putting dirt over it.

Keith had paid for the blanket, a nice one at that. He had even thrown in a few coins to get into Hades, a lock of Keith's, Aspasia's and a few strands of Leon's hair while he was distracted so the baby would know who its family was, and Keith had even taken a wooden horse from Leon's collection to put with the baby too. Just in case, it could ever play in the afterlife. Not to mention even move a wooden horse the size of itself.

Keith wanted to do more but they had to do it quick and quiet if they didn't want anyone to know of this and just hope that this would be enough.

"Thank you for doing this," Aspasia whispered when they looked at the newly covered and unmarked grave.

Keith didn't answer. This was not for her.


	3. I Left My Life For Pathian

Keith had been told time and time again that working was beneath people of Keith's social status but he didn't know what else he would call talking to the rich, important people about things Keith didn't care about usually and he wanted even less to do with them that day.

He had chosen to work in the military at 17, of course with his father's blessing, but he had found himself disinterested that day. Maybe it would have helped if he was one of the soldiers dedicating 25 years of their lives as a part of the army, but that wasn't an option for Keith. Technically he had been an adult at that time but Roman men weren't allowed to handle business deals and other important decisions before they turned 25 and there were simply different options and rules for different classes.

"You're gonna tell me what's this about?" Lance asked as he and Keith were sitting right outside the border to the city. It was a wonder that Lance hadn't questioned Keith as soon as Keith came to him the moment Keith was done the day.

Keith could feel Lance's eyes on him but he refused to move his eyes away from his feet.

Keith licked his bottom lip and bit it as he inhaled deeply. "Aspasia was pregnant."

"Was?"

Keith's eyes closed as he nodded.

Lance tried to put an arm around Keith but pulled it away when Keith tensed as the first touch.

"Are you okay?" Lance asked instead. Keith was still not looking at him but he could almost taste the heaviness of his stare and the seriousness of his face.

"I have to be," Keith sighed. He breathed heavily and wasn't even sure why he was bothered at all. Why he had been bothered all day and why it was so much worse now that he was alone with Lance.

"That's not what I asked."

"It's just-, "Keith started and finally found the strength to look at Lance. "It was just _so_ small. And ugly."

Lance's eyebrows were tilted trying to reach high up to the center of his forehead and trying to reach as far down in the other end. His mouth was shut tight but his eyes told much more than his mouth would have been capable of.

"I just- I didn't even like it, but it didn't-" Keith was breathing heavily and the hair on his arms had risen in a response to his distress. "It was just _so small_."

"I know," Lance mumbled. Lance couldn't have known. He hadn't been there. He hadn't seen its lifeless, black eyes or little hands with small fingers curled up in tiny fists. He hadn't seen how it had looked covered in both new and old blood or felt how hard it had turned after a night outside the womb.

"Do you want to stay at my place today?" Lance asked. It seemed both out of the blue and perfect.

"Yes-no… I don't know. I miss Leon." Keith realized his eyes were full of tears. "Is that weird?"

"No." Lance moved a piece of Keith's hair behind his ear. "It's not."

* * *

Keith looked down at Aspasia's child. The baby was born less than a year after the end of Aspasia's last pregnancy and wasn't his blood. The question of 'if' wasn't present as Keith hadn't tried to sleep with Aspasia since the gods took her last baby and Aspasia hadn't tried to make him but he wouldn't say anything.

This child looked enough like him that it would hopefully not awaken any questions later on and she already had a half-black brother so Keith assumed that it couldn't get worse than it already was.

"Papa?" Leon called.

Keith went down to his knees awkwardly in fear of dropping the baby girl in his arms. This was the first time he touched the baby since she was born and he refused to drop her. He hadn't even held her at her _dies lustricius_ , only told everyone present her name. "Yes, Leon?"

"Where's Mamá?" Leon asked and Keith would have been proud of how much Leon could already say if it wasn't for the situation that Keith was in the middle of.

"She went to the Hades," Keith answered.

"What's that?" Leon asked.

Keith really didn't know how to explain to a small child the concept of death but he also didn't believe in lying to anyone no matter their age. "It's where people go when they die." Leon opened his mouth to ask further questions but closed it again when Keith continued. "Dying is when you leave our world and you can't come back."

"Mamá left me?" Leon asked with wide, devastated eyes that was quickly being welled up with tears.

Keith exhaled when he realized he had just made a 3-year-old cry. He was really not cut out for this.

"She didn't want to leave," Keith promised. "But she had to."

Leon's face crunched up but stopped crying. He instead looked at his sister with furrowed eyebrows and as if he would shoot lightning out of his dark brown eyes. "Can't Eufy leave instead?"

"Her name is Euthymia, and no, she cannot leave instead of your mamá," Keith explained. He kept it simple both because he didn't feel like explaining and because Leon was smart but he was still a very small child.

"She left for Eufy!" Leon said and Keith really didn't know if that was a statement or a question. He still felt like he should answer. Even if this was the moment where people normally lied but not Keith.

"She loved to do so and she would have left for you too if she had to," Keith explained and he didn't think it was a lie. At least he would lose the respect he had had for his wife if that was the case.

"Mamá said a leaf fell when she got me," Leon explained.

Keith didn't know if Leon was saying that he was the leaf or that the leaf made Aspasia pregnant but all Keith could think about was that Leon _was_ created by something falling. Or more like some _one_ with her legs wide open but Keith wasn't going to tell a toddler that. Especially about the mother of said toddler.

Keith put a hand on his son's shoulder, hoped he wouldn't fall with a baby in his arms, and promised Leon, "I'll tell you how you were created one day." Keith wasn't sure how much detail he would go into but he would at least explain how babies are made to both of the children.

"Mamá said a leaf fell," Leon repeated.

"I'm sure she did," Keith sighed but luckily Leon was too young to properly read the tired expression on Keith's face.

* * *

Things were fine after Aspasia's death. Lance's wife looked a little tense but Keith couldn't blame her as he knew what her not being pregnant for so long meant that Lance had kept his word about not sleeping with his wife all that time ago. Besides, it wasn't something that people talked about but Keith was sure that there was ways for women to satisfy themselves without a man.

Fine was fine until the Roman–Parthian War hit in 58 AD. Keith was admired for his physic for other reasons than Lance finding him attractive. As all Romans he had to keep in shape to honor the gods for the body they had given him but while people like Lance didn't slack, they didn't do as much as Keith did as a part of the military. Even if he wasn't forced to do all the dirty work the plebeians had to do, he still tried to train just as much as they did. He tried to honor everyone all the while having a way to get rid of his frustrations throughout the years.

"Lance," Keith whispered even though they were the only ones in the room, only ones on the floor in fact, and he knew that the slaves were looking after the kids just fine.

"Yeah?" Lance asked.

"I've been chosen for the war," Keith whispered. He knew it was a terrible time to tell Lance but he didn't know when he would get another chance of privacy with Lance.

Lance was completely quiet at first. It took him almost a couple minutes to gather himself enough to just swallow and ask, "What?"

"The war, they want me to go."

"What are you going to tell them?" Lance asked with a fragile voice.

"Nothing, I'm going," Keith answered fearful of how Lance was going to react. Keith couldn't very well refuse when asked directly. He knew the strategies and he had a young and strong body. In war that was all that counted and social standings were insignificant.

"No," Lance ordered in a firm tone instead of the tearful or blank one that Keith had expected.

Lance had never ordered Keith to do anything. He had only acted like that when they were having sex but it was really more firm suggestions than anything as Lance wouldn't do or expect anything if Keith wasn't giving his enthusiastic consent.

"I do what I want, Lance, and I've already decided to join and do what I have to do for the Empire," Keith told him when he had gathered himself.

"What about deciding to not throw your life away like an idiot?" Lance asked rhetorically.

Keith sighed. He had already known Lance wouldn't accept this development with open arms but Keith hadn't thought through how difficult this conversation was going to be.

"Well, I am," Keith told Lance in a sulky mutter.

"Then I will just join too," Lance decided.

Keith breathed out and narrowed his eyes. "No, you won't."

Lance glared at Keith too. "You really think I will just let some asshole come and kill you without doing anything?"

"Lance, you're not Achilles that can just come and avenge me," Keith scolded.

"You can't stop me from trying," Lance fired back.

"You'll end up just like him. Dead."

"Well, so would you be then so I don't see a problem with it."

Keith rolled until he was on top of Lance, could look properly down at him, and waited until Lance looked up at him too. "Lance, you love your son and daughters too much."

"So?" Lance asked.

"So?" Keith repeated. "You won't leave them; you shouldn't _want_ to leave them. I just have two kids living in my house who will be just as fine without me as they are now."

"Really?" Lance asked disbelievingly as he raised an eyebrow. "Because if mine loses me, then they at least have Olympias but if yours loses you then they have no one."

"They have my parents," Keith muttered threateningly. "And you know none of them are mine."

Lance didn't even bat an eye. "I know you, Keith, and I know you don't need blood to love them."

"You can't say how I feel better than I can," Keith scolded and narrowed his eyes. "I know myself better than you do."

It was a lie but Keith refused to acknowledge that yet.

* * *

Their last night together before Keith was leaving was beautiful and heartbreaking. They had had a full day of running around like teenagers to Leon's amusement as he tried to run along them and didn't even cry when he fell and the men had planned to satisfy future sexual urges together that night with Lance in the receiving end for once but then Lance started crying and Keith lost all interest at the sight of it.

"Just don't die, okay?" Lance asked repeatedly.

"I won't," Keith lied every time as he held onto Lance.

"I need you here with me, so don't die."

"I won't"

"Do you promise?"

Keith swallowed and looked between Lance's eyes so he wouldn't have to look into them as he answered.

"Yes."

* * *

"Don't sleep with another man's wife," Lance warned Keith.

"I'll try my best not to," Keith deadpanned. Who the hell did Lance think Keith was? Jupiter? Please, Keith would rather not sleep with any of the women he would meet.

Lance smirked but then got more serious as he put a hand on each of Keith's cheeks and looked deeply into his eyes. "And don't die."

"I won't," Keith promised but he just felt like a giant liar. Lance gave him a sad smile.

"And I won't sleep with the other soldiers," Keith promised honestly.

Lance's smile turned a little less sad but not entirely careless either. "Even if they're hot?"

Keith less out a breath of air that vaguely resembled a laugh. "Yes, even if they're hot and even if they're known sexgods."

"Good," Lance said in a quiet intimate voice. "Just come home to this sexgod, okay?"

"Okay," Keith whispered back and looked up into Lance's face as Lance's eyes first switched between what eye to focus on and then tried to take in every detail of Keith's face.

Keith slowly moved away from Lance and tried not to, but he couldn't help looking at everyone over his shoulder.

Lance and Leon was reaching for Keith with striking similarities. Leon only held back by Keith's father and Lance by something inside him.

Euthymia didn't care as she was still only 6 months old. She did pick up on the atmosphere but was happily chewing on her hand rather than seeing Keith leave. Keith was happy that she wasn't crying but he still felt slightly offended at her apathy.

Even Keith's usually stoic parents showed more than a glimpse of gloom at their son leaving.

* * *

Keith was great at fighting. He was in a great shape and could run for miles and he was strong. He could swing his sword through all obstacles in his way but everything had an end and Keith met his equal and that equal was far less tired than Keith was.

Keith was the first one to be hit and he didn't even have time to think before he used his opponent's distressed tugging of the sword lodged into Keith's thigh. Keith swung his sword and would have cut the head of the man in front of him clean off if it wasn't for his cervical vertebrae. The man bled out fast and passed out even faster and the last thing he did was pull the sword out of Keith's leg. The pull pulled Keith off balance and to the ground face down right next to the man he had just killed.

The cut didn't really hurt after the first pain of the blade penetrating his skin. Just warm and Keith's couldn't help looking down at his leg as his pale skin was painted vivid red as well as the ground under him that changed from brown to black with a red tint.

Keith missed Lance, he missed his father, and he missed the children that wasn't even his because Keith had to admit to himself as he was bleeding out that they didn't share his face but he didn't succeed in shutting them out. They were his and always had been. He hadn't seen any of them for a year but he loved them just as much and wanted to cry at the thought of Euthymia learning to talk without him. She wouldn't even recognize him if she saw him. Perhaps Leon wouldn't either. Perhaps that would be just the same as they had probably changed too much for Keith to recognize them either. Or perhaps Keith just wanted something to soothe himself as he laid on the cold ground and regretted too many things about his life.

Not that he could ever tell anyone that as the last thing he would ever do would be killing a man that had doomed him and he would just be another casualty and not immortalized by name nor anything else. A forgotten 25-year-old widow and father to two.

He hoped Aspasia's parents wouldn't raise Euthymia, even if it wasn't their fault that their daughter ended up getting pregnant by at least two different men than her husband. Keith's parents weren't preferable either with their constant disappointed looks but at least they could sell an obviously gay son enough so that someone married their daughter away to him.

He wanted his children to be happy. He wanted them to play their days away, love whomever they married, and have just as happy children of their own.

Leg armor was for the weak but he thought that he would rather have been weak that day than leaving his kids' lives to anyone other than himself.

* * *

The battle went on around Keith. Men fell and men fought.

Some stepped on Keith but it was a wonder that he wasn't trampled to death. Not that it mattered, Keith couldn't help thinking that this was it anyway.

Keith would never teach his son, born with another man's blood but just as much his as if they shared blood, how to swim and how to fight. He would never learn him all the skills that the boy would need in life that couldn't be taught in a classroom.

Keith would never teach his daughter that the world saw her as less but she wouldn't be in his household. He would never _create_ such a household for her. Keith would never even know if she would need a reminder of her worth or if she would grow up self-assured enough for ten men.

Keith would never share an apple or even a bread with Lance again. Keith wanted to apologize to Lance for lying, for knowing that he lied as he promised to come back. Lance's eyes had been so blue when he had asked Keith to come back but Keith wished in that moment that he hadn't said anything. Maybe Lance had already moved on. Maybe Lance already had made Octavia, his youngest named after Rome's sweetheart and Emperor Nero's wife, a big sister. Maybe Keith would die with no one to really mourn him.

His parents had never been properly proud. They had been pleased when Keith did well in a lesson as a boy and congratulated him when he was one of the best in that one Olympian game where he met Lance, but they had never been proud. He just hoped that they would be proud of his kids.

A man with brown eyes and dark hair pulled Keith away from his thoughts when he stopped the bleeding with dirty cloths. It ached but Keith knew that it should have been painful.

The man pulled Keith away from the battle when the enemy was dead. He pulled Keith through the corpses of their fellow men and back to the camp before Keith's drained and infected body was brought back to the city with the naïve hope that a man who had survived this much would survive the trip and recover back home.

The trip took weeks maybe even months. Keith developed a fever and would often be delusional as the man with kind, warm eyes would try to make him drink.

"Just a little more," he would say.

"Hang in there," he would soothe.

"We're almost there," he would promise again and again until it was true.

The city was somber at Keith's arrival and for a moment he thought that all the stories about sailing to Hades had been wrong and that it was really a bumpy ride in a horse carriage, when he heard the news of Nero's wife Octavia. Her banishment and her death as color slowly but surely returned to Keith's cheeks.

* * *

It took a long time for Keith to recover enough to go home. Not that he physically couldn't be moved before that but he was too delusional and confused to answer questions before his fever had gone down and no one knew who he was before that.

The physician sent his apprentice. A boy barely starting his adolescence but with quick, long legs that carried him out the door and into the city fast and he brought Keith's family back.

His parents stood in the door opening and a small girl hid behind Keith's mother while Leon walked cautiously towards Keith. Taking one step at a time and stopping to study Keith when he was halfway there. It wasn't the reunion Keith had secretly hoped for if he returned but it was okay.

Keith needed some time to take in Leon himself.

Leon was still a child but he had grown. His hair was just as curly as before and skin just as tan as the last time Keith had seen him. Keith had wondered if it would have darkened even more as it had done from Leon was born until just before Keith left. Some of the baby fat was gone from his cheeks and his limbs were longer and thinner. No more cubby legs instead there was almost no fat in them as they stood with lean muscle build for running around.

"Hello," Keith said quietly, both to not scare the boy in front of him and because he wasn't just tired, he was _exhausted_.

"Hello," Leon echoed.

"I'm so glad to see you," Keith said and knew that he wasn't handling this as he should when Leon almost took a step back at the yearning in Keith's voice.

Keith's mouth closed tight, his eyebrows furrowed and he was almost certain that his eyes were glossy.

"Who are you?" Leon asked when the silence had almost eaten Keith's heart completely up and stabbed the last piece of Keith with his words.

"I'm-I'm your father," Keith said. The words felt strange in his mouth. Mostly because he had never called himself Leon's father before but also because it was just wrong saying those words to anyone.

Leon looked suspicious at Keith, then at his arm and at last at Keith's parents. He only turned away when Keith's father gave a stuff nod.

"I've been gone for a long time," Keith explained. "It had been… It has been over a year."

"Almost two years," Keith's mother piped up.

Keith had to swallow the lump in his throat and blink away the glossiness from his eyes. Almost two years. Almost half Leon's lifetime and most of Euthymia's.

"Are you really my father?" Leon asked.

"Yeah, yes, I-I am," Keith stuttered.

"Will you play with me then?" he asked.

Keith's leg didn't heal properly between the rough stopgaps and infection. He would probably always be in pain there and defiantly never be able to use it properly. Still there was nothing he would rather do than play with Leon so he nodded too stunned to say anything. The gods had given him an olive branch and Keith really could cry now.

Leon turned around and that second before he said anything was enough for all Keith's hope to crash and him to think of all the ways Leon could disregard or simply not believe him.

"Come on, Euthymia, it's our papa."

The girl shook her head but let herself be pulled forward when Leon walked over to take her hand.

She was almost as old as Leon had been when Keith had left and he remembered Leon as so small especially compared to now. Still, she was so much bigger than before.

She had been a baby with the softest dark down on the top of her head. It had been so delicate that she had been almost completely bald from the moment she had been born because her hair had simple worn away as fast as it had grown.

Now it reached her shoulders in soft waves that moved at her every movement. Her skin had no more red tint and instead looked almost identical to Aspasia's fair skin. Her limps had lengthened too but she still held the softness of a baby.

She looked nervously up at him and Keith realized even her eyes had changed. Not just the look and feelings of them but the color had changed from a greyish blue to brown just a shade or two lighter than her brother's.

Keith wasn't a touchy person and had turned even less so during his time in the war but he had rarely wanted a hug more than at that moment.

He didn't say anything.

* * *

"Papa, can I sit with you?" a small voice asked.

Keith looked down, expecting to see Leon who had engaged in some interaction with Keith and accepted Keith trying to talk to him too but Euthymia barely kept herself from running away most of the time when he tried to talk to her.

"Yeah, of course," Keith hurried out when the question sunk in.

Men and women ate separately but Keith could make an exception for Euthymia. His daughter _wanted_ to sit with him.

He could barely keep the giddiness out of his entire body.

"Do you like horses?" she asked when she had crawled up in the seat next to him.

* * *

Lance's house had always been filled with people who looked just like him.

First it had been his parents' house where all his siblings had lived until they married with the exception of his eldest brother who stayed at the same house with his wife and eventually his children.

Then it had been Lance's own house where there wasn't any running feet at first but now there were four pairs of tan children's feet, 8 children's feet, that belonged to children who all looked like versions of Lance with lighter skin and 3 with longer, brown hair and two of those with brown eyes instead of blue.

Keith had once been used to seeing Lance's children but he was clearly out of training because he almost died when he heard a high-pitched shriek of one child followed by three others until every adult in the household came down to investigate.

The poor slave girl who had let him in looked like she had seen a ghost and could just see how she had made a huge mistake of opening the door for a strange man with a limp.

"Keith?" Lance's voice asked. Keith looked up at him and saw how Lance's eyes slowly opened until Keith was sure they would pop out at light smack on the back of Lance's head. "Keith!"

Long legs ran until long arms could wrap around Keith.

Lance's head fell to Keith's shoulder.

"Keith," he said once more as Keith wrapped his arms around Lance.

Things weren't great but they would be okay.


End file.
